This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.

Featuring a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, this Princeton Classics edition of The Great Mother introduces a new generation of readers to this profound and enduring work.

About the Author

Erich Neumann (1905–60), a psychologist and philosopher, was born in Berlin and lived in Tel Aviv from 1934 until his death. His books include The Origins and History of Consciousness, The Fear of the Feminine, and Amor and Psyche (all Princeton).

Review

"Neumann's creative intuition has enabled him to read in these records of the past a content and meaning that throws a beam of light on the psychological history of [hu]mankind."

—Journal of Analytical Psychology